Refining Trail
Lying in my tent, I’m looking through the mesh at stars flickering between the forest branches. After hiking twenty miles on the rocky trail, my body is spent. Yet my mind refuses to rest. Every sense is on full alert, especially hearing. My military years guarding prison camps in Siberia trained my ears to catch the faintest sounds and avert grave danger.
Now, deep in Virginia’s forested Blue Ridge Mountains, listening to the pulse of its nightlife, I know I’m in one of the safest places possible. I have no fear, but that old instinct won’t release its grip. Reaching for my Kindle, one of two devices I brought along, I read my devotional: “We still complain when sanctifying trials come our way…”
A sudden gust sweeps through the canopy, acorns hitting the ground like bullets. Is this a sanctifying trial? Moments that startle us awake and shake loose the illusion of control, so faith can find its footing again in the dark?
My mind drifts to the list I wrote back in the comforts of home, the reasons I’m here.
Step out of the bubble.
Time with the Creator in His creation.
Trade glowing screens for starlit skies.
Exchange political static for the sound of silence.
Find out if this trail can be a training ground for character.
The Appalachian Trail isn’t an escape from life; it’s a rich, rewarding encounter with it.
I read on, “We are still torn between our love for the claustrophobic little kingdom of self and the grand, glorious purposes of the kingdom of God.”
I picture my tent as that claustrophobic little kingdom, and beyond its thin walls, His vast, grand space kingdom. Drifting off, my desire for the comforts of home pulls against the reasons I came. I choose to remember my purpose in coming, because focus determines result.
Drops splattering on my face wake me. In the chilly pre-dawn darkness, I wrap my blistered toes, pack my thirty-pound rucksack, strap it over my shoulders, grab my trekking poles, and hit the trail.
Here, the trail is the teacher, and it dishes out the same to everybody. It doesn’t bend to comfort or complaint. I can’t change it. Just accept it and grow or fight it and go miserable.
The climb is steep and the fog dense. Wet from sweat and drizzle, I finally crest the mountain in daylight. But I can’t see the valley, the reward I expected from this climb.
Standing here in the fog, it strikes me how much this mirrors real life, pushing hard to get to the ‘top’, expecting some result for all your efforts. But when you finally arrive – no fanfare, no applause, just silent fog. So you swallow your pride, release expectations, and keep moving on.
The AT isn’t like the Sierra or the Rockies, where sweeping views meet you around every bend. Hikers call it the “Green Tunnel” where we’re better off leaving our expectations of grand vistas at home and learn to see subtle wonders in small things.
An eagle floating overhead.
The orange glow of a dawn.
Dew strung like jewels on a spider’s web.
The distant hoot of an owl.
And some grand mountain top vistas.
Beauty is everywhere when I slow down to notice.
Looking around, I can’t tell which way I came, which way to go, so I examine droplets on the grass and choose the direction where they still hang undisturbed. After a while without seeing a single white blaze marking the AT, I get uneasy. Did I choose the wrong trail? With every step, the temptation to go back grows stronger.
Finally, through the fog, a faint white stripe on a tree comes into view. Relief.
So often in life I find myself walking through fog, longing for a sign to assure me I’m still on the right trail. Another lesson in perseverance, one of many the AT seems eager to teach. If I’m teachable.
I’m reminded that character is like a teabag. You don’t know what’s inside until it’s steeped in hot water. The AT has a way of steeping us hotter and deeper, burning off excess comfort fat, and if we let it, forging the muscle of purpose.
Around the bend, I meet a young man with long curly hair and a substantial backpack. “Hi, I’m Creek.” “Hi, I’m Baikal,” I answer. He gives me that familiar puzzled look. “Baikal is the deepest freshwater lake in the world. It’s in Siberia. I’ve crossed it in the winter more times than any other place.”
I wanted a trail name that would spark curiosity, invite a conversation – it always does. We trade the usual trail questions. “Through hiker?” “No, just section.” “Where did you start?” “I-64. Shenandoah Park.”
From small talk, we soon dive deeper, to heart level. By nightfall, we decide to camp at Maupin Field Shelter. As we set up tents and cook our meals, our life stories begin to unfold. Childhood, family, father wound, struggles, God, forgiveness…. In time, we unpack not only our backpacks but also the invisible baggage we carry inside.
Out here, we are strangers, yet we’re equals – just hikers with backpacks, stripped down to the essentials. We have nothing to prove, all walking the same trail, sleeping under the same stars, soaking in the same rain. And it feels freeing to open up, to speak from deep within.
Beneath Creek’s easy smile, I sense a quiet hunger – a longing for guidance, for a father’s voice. For three days, we hike and talk, then part ways.
That evening at a shelter, I encounter the Triple Crown hiker who conquered all three trails (CDT, PCT, and now AT) but not his own negative attitude towards the trail, weather, and people.
Then I meet Greybeard, the 90-year-old through-hiker legend, conquering his 2,184-mile goal for the second time. When I ask what motivates him to do this, he looks heavenward and says, “Here I’m closest to God. All nature around me points to Him. I thank the Lord every day for the trail.”
To be at the top comes with a substantial price paid down below, where the struggle is raw and lonely, where your body wears down while your spirit is polished in endurance, contentment, and gratitude. Sweat, blisters, pain, rain, sleepless nights… all parts of the trail we can’t change. All we can change is our inner attitude.
Another trail legend, Nimblewill Nomad has walked all the known trails in America. He hands me a sandwich, then shares a few poems, lessons the trail wrote on his heart, each one echoing humility, reverence, and deep respect for the journey.
On day thirteen I finally reach the top of McAfee Knob. The day is amazingly perfect: clear blue skies, a soft breeze, sunlight spilling across the vast valley far below. Standing on the rocky ledge, I take it all in – the end of my section hike. I linger, basking in the moment, the beauty, the sense of accomplishment. My eyes trace the ridge line of mountaintops fading into the blue horizon, like a long winding story, every ridge a challenge faced, every valley a lesson learned.
“Lord, set me a path by the side of the road,
Pray this be a part of your plan,
Then heap on the burden and pile on the load
And I’ll trek it the best that I can.
Bless me with patience, touch strength to my back
Then cut me loose and I’ll go
Just like the burro toting his pack
The ox a-plowing his row.”
-by permission from Nimblewill Nomad
I slowly make my way into the valley, to the ‘row I was given to plow’ and the ‘pack to tote’ with a new sense of appreciation and thankfulness.
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